Russian success at Eurovision can convert for Yandex

Nick Wilsdon  May 21, 2006

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4 Responses to “Russian success at Eurovision can convert for Yandex”

1. Dexter Says:
   May 21st, 2006 at 5:13 pm

   Nick,

   It is a well known fact that national minorities are very active in Eurovision voting, helping their homelands by any means possible.

   Thus the fact that the Ukraine awarded 12 points to Russia does not mean any change in general sentiment towards Russia of the Ukrainian majority. Basically, Russians living in the Ukraine actively voted for Russia, while the remaining population didn’t have any single favorite foreign country, so the other votes were distributed among a number of participating countries. Hence, Russia got the highest number of votes despite the fact that general Ukrainian sentiment may have been negative (note that you cannot vote _against_ a country).

   The same thing happened in many other cases.

   Ireland awarded 12 points to Lithuania. It doesn’t have any special relationship with the Baltics (politically, geographically or economically), apart from the fact that some 150k Lithuanians are legally or illegally employed in Ireland. So these 3-5% or so of the de facto Ireland population made all the difference during the voting.

   And I don’t think those were the Germans who awarded top points to Turkey on behalf of Germany. Something tells me those were Turkish expats living in Germany. Again, they probably accounted only for a fraction of the total voter audience, but they were focused on voting for Turkey, while the remaining audience scattered their votes across a number of other participant countries.

2. Nick Wilsdon Says:
   May 21st, 2006 at 5:40 pm

   Hi Dexter,

   Thanks for your comments. You make a very good point about ex-pats but it was still a surprising result for us watching here (my Russian friends especially). This would explain the voting in relation to pro-Russians in Ukraine and Turkish ex-pats in Germany but what about the Turkish vote for Greece in last years contest? Many seemed to take that as a sign the old animosity had died down. Are there that many Greek ex-pats living in Turkey?

   Trivial as Eurovision is, I really hope it does mark a return to normal relations between the two countries. At the very least it was a bit of positive and fun PR for both sides.

3. Val Says:
   May 31st, 2006 at 4:52 am

   Well, I do not understand why you have chosen a picture of Finnish musicians (the wild guys) to illustrate an article about Russians and Ukrainians.

   Is it a hint?

4. Ann Says:
   December 22nd, 2006 at 5:44 pm

   Let’s add that Balcan countries( Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia)always vote for each other. That makes me furious!

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